"No, Herrick, I am no idle echo of other men's doubts. I hear his lordship and the Frenchman bandy the ball of infidelity, scoff at all creeds and all believers, quote Collins and Woolston, discredit Abraham, and make light of Moses; prove the absurdity of all miracles, the fatuity of all Christians. But it was in the depths of my own heart, in the silence of my own chamber, that doubt first entered: and, like the devil that came to Dr. Faustus in Marlowe's play, once having entered, the intruder was not to be banished. That heaven which you Christians talk of with such easy assurance, looking forward to your residence there as placidly as a wealthy cit looks forward to a mansion at Clapham or a cottage at Islington--that golden Jerusalem--is for me girt with a wall of brass that shuts out hope and belief." "Your mind will change some day, Jack." "_Then_ I shall begin to believe in miracles." This was but one of the many conversations which the friends had held upon the same subject. Let their lives or their creeds differ never so much, they were always staunch and loyal to each other. Whatever new hopes might gladden Herrick's pathway, the companion of his wild youth must be ever to him as a dearly loved brother. * * * * * At Whitsuntide the House was up, and Herrick was his own master for a week. He was to spend part of the time at Lavendale Manor, but not all his holiday. He had other business for some portion of the week, and that business took him to Tunbridge Wells. He had read in one of the fashionable journals, the _Flying Post_, that Lady Tredgold and her daughters were staying at the Wells; and he happened to have just at this time a desire to renew his acquaintance with her ladyship, albeit she had done her very best to snub him. "Perhaps, now I am member for Bossiney, and supposed to stand well with Sir Robert, she may be more civil," he said to himself. He was not mistaken in his conjecture. He met the lady and her daughters promenading the Pantiles next day, and was received with cordiality. His fame had reached the Bath, where he had been talked of as one of the rising young men of the day. Walpole's favour, his own success in the House, had been alike exaggerated by the many-tongued goddess, and Lady Tredgold, who last winter had esteemed him an insufficient match for her wealthy niece, was, in this merry month of May, inclined to look upon him as a tolerable suitor for her dowerless elder daughter, whose charms had been on the wane for the last three years, and whom the Bath and the Wells had alike rejected from the list of toasts and belles.